For
the second winter LGB we go for African beautiest, with Burundi
Mahonda and a classic Yirgacheffe. In Burundi we encountered a small delay in delivery because of political troubles, but quality and freshness is still guaranteed. And the 'potato disease' which gave a lot of troublesome defects a couple of years ago, seems to be almost gone. The Mahonda is as clean as it gets. After a couple seasonal blends without Ethiopia we go back to our fav origin.

It's
been a tough year to get our hands on a clean cup Yirg this year, but
finally we managed to find this fantastic Grade 1 – extra special
sorting – lot from the CHELBESSA Washing Station. Expect subtle
acidity, with a touch of Earl Grey and yellow fruit.

Try to keep your shots restricted; this way your caps and flats will come out better.

And also for filter brews this particular combo gives magic in your cup. Good luck.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Of course these are my personal picks.
Maybe some roast profiles were not to your liking, or it was just not your favourite coffee; i fully understand.

2015 was the year of (relatively) weak Ethiopians.
We struggled to find great El Salvador lots as well. And so was also Panama a bit off the radar.

And again no Brazils that were clean and special enough to be mentioned here. Certainly not for filter.
On filter i like above all 'clean cups'. Coffee's without any disturbing flavors.
I like some extra zesty notes and fruitiness. And a long clean after taste. I suppose you understand.

For Espresso i talk just clean shots, not milk based coffee's.
With our new roaster -and cooling tray!!-we were more in control of the roasts and so we could keep acidity of those punchy Kenyans low. The balance in general was better. And the flavors lasted longer.
Our idea is that the most coffees only peak 3 weeks after roast.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

A yearly coverage of Caffenation's best tunes, albums, music!!
For the Antwerp department it is getting bit by bit more difficult for me to filter the most funky notes and keep track of what plays most in the player.
But Amsterdam is still rocking and rolling and Bert did provide me his most remarkable 5 musical highlights of last year.
Yes people, this is espresso bar music. Enjoy

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Kenyan
coffee deserves its own category in the coffee world. There is
good reason why many of the most experienced coffee fanatics in
the industry call Kenya their favorite: It’s a unique and
flat-out spectacular coffee! Why
is it so great? A near-perfect synergy of altitude, latitude,
botany and processing tradition is the most logical answer.

This
coffees come from fields around the famous Mount Kenya, where most
of Kenya's top coffees grow in volcanic soils. The
variety is mainly SL28 and SL34, with a little bit of Ruiri and
Batian. The
Screening is a mix of AA, AB and PB (peaberry).The
blending makes sure this coffee is well balanced, with good
sweetness, subtle acidity and an endless and clean after taste. We
believe this could be you ideal starter of the mornings these last
days of the year or the perfect finish after a great Christmas
meal.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Last Sunday we had a Home Brewing Class at Caffenation. And yesterday i did a lecture, demonstration and competition around the theme at the Kitchen Aid Convention in Antwerp.

It was 2,5 years ago we did a session like this at Caffenation, which is damn too little and too late. But the problem was that we did not have a good platform to announce the classes, too little teachers and not enough interest from the public.

All these 3 things changed now and so we are hopefully ready to get these classes back on track.

Those who were not there; 'bad luck for you', cause there's always a lot to learn when you start experimenting with all tools and with 10 enthusiastic coffee lovers around you.

Of course there's still the blog and here a little bit of the new stuff we discovered or confirmed.

On the theoretical side there's not so much to say, but once at the testing table this quickly changed.

We did a test on the Clever Dripper.

(Between brackets :
Coffee, as for all tests, was the Chelbessa, a one week old filter roast of this washed Yirgacheffe grade 1.
The water : 94 degrees hot filtered water - 100 PPM -, probably 90 degrees C in the kettle)

We gave it a 18 (grams of coffee) to 300 (grams of water) ratio.
And went for a 1, 2, 3 and 4 minute extraction before placing the Clever Dripper on a (room temperature) mug.
These results were a bit predictable. 1 minute gave underextraction, 4 minutes overextraction.

We did a test on the V60.
Same ratio.
Glass dripper with brown (washed) filter, Glass dripper with white (washed) filter and Ceramic dripper with white (washed) filter.
The Brown filter was as always disgusting. If you have a clean bean on a light or medium roast; always go for white filter paper. If you think it is not environmentally friendly? Go Filtropa!

The, both pre heated, Glass dripper versus the Ceramic V60 dripper :
The Glass gave a faster drip.
And a more detailed, exciting flavor.
What could have been the reason? I guess it's the absorption of heat. While the glass dripper absorbs less of the heat, the water is a tad hotter and runs through faster. Certainly for this years Ethiopians this is a big plus.
A faster run doesn't always end up in extra and more detailed flavors, but this time it worked. We had a 2,5 minutes run for the glass and almost 3 minutes for the ceramic. This is serious of course.

Later on we tested the V60 Glass dripper decanter. The poor was a bit firmer at the start and we kept the coffee bed a bit lower, with continuous pouring. Stop after 2,5 minutes. Fantastic performance by one of our guests Roeland and a supreme cups of coffee!!

One of the challenges at the session is to give the students a chance to test something. Nik wanted to brew a 3-cup Chemex.
The result was very good. Almost the same extraction time, but a heavier coffee. A tiny little bit forced in flavors maybe, but very fruity and a lot of body!

We tested Aeropresses. Our famous Classic Recipe (made to perfection before by Simon, Jeff and Charlene) had a cleaner cup then the inversed. And another student his Press showed much more dirtyness when pressing it too far. Once you hear the hissing sound of air escaping via those tiny holes at the bottom, your cup is ruined.

We tested the pour over Kitchen Aid coffee machine and that surprised everybody. As crisp and clean as any other cup on the table.

The new Kitchen Aid French Press didn't perform well though.

So i was curious yesterday at this Kitchen Aid convention how it would be when 6 groups of 6 people would take on the challenge to make the best possible coffee with this tool - the newly French Press with build in scale and timer.

We used the same coffee as last Sunday and Spa Blauw/Reine water.

And the results were .... better.
Difficult to follow what went wrong last Sunday and better when these Kitchen Aid staffers took control.
First of all the Spa water has always helped to brew this perfect cup of coffee, but also i advised the people to keep the temperature high enough.
Of course no boiling water, but in general you need to give warmer water to 'immersion brews' then to 'drip brews'.
In general for Aeropress we take 80 to 82 degrees warm water.
For Clever and V60 it is 86 to 90 degrees.
Our big batch brewer 88 degrees.
And the Kitchen Aid Brewer is 92, the Mocca Master 93 and the Wilfa 94 degrees Celcius.
For Cupping and French Press we tap off 96 degrees, so expect it a tad lower once poured, but still something like 92. And this works better. Certainly with those (relatively) 'flat' Ethiopians.

Last note on the Automatic Brewers listed above. I've been experimenting a lot with these 3 brewers and like the Kitchen Aid most, before Mocca Master. The Wilfa was better after a couple of months, cause in the beginning the plastic tubes gave off some chemical flavors.
And it also helped when i poured on a bit of cold water at the grounds before the hot water came on....

That's it for today. So see you all at the next class for some more experimenting.